What got you started .

[postman]

What got you started on cycling .I was thinking about this today .It has brought me so much joy and many friends .I got started during my divorce back in 1986-87 it took 14 months to sort out .
I was back in my old bedroom at my mums ,it nearly sent me potty .I also had to stop doing overtime to get my sanity back .So one guy mentioned filling the time by cycling .As they say the rest is history .It's the finest thing i know .

 

[Hover Fly]

Father got me cycling by having me on the top tube of his Claud Butler, he once took me up and down Dunmail Raise.

 

[david1701]

about 6 months ago I wanted a bit more fitness and some independence from needing the car, gone on from there

 

[fossyant]

Cycled my paper round 5 miles a day, all weathers. Got a job at 16, was serious, and bought a good road bike, joined my local club and the rest is history. Had a few 'fallow' years with job and young family, but it's all sorted again...

 

[Fnaar]

Spent most of my childhood on a bike, used bikes as transport in late teens, early twenties. Used as transport again for a couple of years in mid thirties, then stopped. Moved somewhere with nice countryside in early forties, started again for pleasure and exercise.... now out on bike any chance I get!

 

[biggs682]

use to ride a lot in my early teens , got my first racer a red Viscount aerospace at about 13 thren graduated to Orange and Blue 531 Holdswoth a couple of years later , cant remember what happened to that glorious bike or what happened once i got to 16 and started riding mopeds etc etc .

then in early 30's brought a Claud Butler mtb with reynolds tubing which got replaced in 1993 after 2 years by a M arin bear valley which is still part of my fleet even know , then 6 years ago , i changed jobs which enable me to commute to and from work on a bike using which ever bike i like , i buy and ride them mainly racers from the 80's for a while then sell them on after making sure they are roadworthy to enable me to buy the next one etc etc etc .

 

[on the road]

Got my first bike at age 7, a chopper (not like the rubbish ones out now). We were a big family and we all had our own bikes, as time went by the bikes started to fall apart, so some of us ended up with racers. I was given my first racer at age 12 and could only just about reach the pedals. Would cycle to the park every day because I had nothing else to do, continued doing that through my teenage years but being a little more ambitous and contined cycling long distances through my 20's, 30's and now 40's.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

Got brought a bike for Xmas when I was about 5 or 6, mid 1950's, and used to play on my bike, in the early sixties I was cycling to and from school, mid sixties I was cycling to and from work, late sixties stopped cycling. About 1979 I sold my motorbike and started cycling again, I had just met the mrs and wanted to save for a house, mid 1980's did my first club ride, been commuting and club cycling ever since.

 

[Headgardener]

My brother sold me his Saracen Compass when he and his wife bought a new bike each about three years ago. I have since bought a Dawes Horizion for touring with and as the Compass is in need of some repair work the Horizion is my main bike for everything at the moment.

 

[funnymummy]

I've always cycled, my first 'bike' was a Pashley Pickle, hand me down from my cousin, couple of 2nd hand ones as I got older, I loved my Tommahawk, my couisn had a Chopper & we cruised round togther - thought we were so cool!
Got a Raleigh shopper as a teenager, did my paper-round/school/weekend wanders on her. Stopped for a few years late teens as it messed my hair & make-up up!!
Started again at 21, lived in London by that time - was pointless having a car, #1son went everywhere in his little seat on the bcak, moved to the Coast Bought MTBs for exploring the Downs & touring on, then my MummyBike when #2 &3 came along, started touring again about 3 yaers ago - Can not imagine life without a bike.
My ex once said I loved my bike more than him - I still have that bike

 

[Jenkins]

Smoking.

As a youth I cycled everywhere before I discovered mopeds and then cars as a teenager, with the bike being kept in working order but not used.

Then a few years ago work banned smoking in the office so, as I never smoked in my car or at home, I got the bike out more often so I could maintain my nicotine levels on the way home.

I'm now 3 stone lighter, purchased more bikes than is sensible, broke some and sold others and I don't smoke (although that is due to stopping during a nasty bout of flu and not starting again!)

 

[ColinJ]

As a (mature) student, I was power-walking about 40 miles a week to/from the university, round the campus and shopping. I'd stopped eating meat and given up alcohol except for when I went home in the holidays. As a result, my weight had dropped to 10 stone 10 pounds by the time I graduated in 1986. I'm a medium build and 6' 1", so for me that was seriously skinny! (My party trick at the time was to slide a roll of Sellotape over my wrist and all the way up my arm to my armpit! )

I got a stressful job and to unwind in the evenings I was drinking again and pigging out on cheese and pickle sandwiches. And of course - I wasn't power-walking 40 miles a week any more either ...

By summer 1989, I had ballooned up to 16 stone 5 pounds, my heaviest ever. I felt terrible. One particularly humiliating episode finally convinced me that it was time to do something about my weight problem and dodgy lifestyle. (I'd got caught out in a thunderstorm in the company car park and had been unable to run for cover with the man who gave me a lift, and who was nearly 30 years older than me. I squelched into the office some minutes later, red-faced and gasping for breath, to find him relaxing with a cup of coffee at his desk.)

So there I was, one evening in early July, 1989. I'd got home, turned on the TV and discovered that something interesting was just coming on Channel 4 - the Tour de France! (I'd loved cycling as a child, but cycling ha ended for me when my bike was stolen from the school bike sheds when I was 13 years old.) I soon got hooked on that year's Tour ...

This was the year of the titanic scrap between Lemond and Fignon, culminating in Lemond's famous 8 second victory. I watched that final stage and found myself thinking the magic words - "I want to be a cyclist again!" I went out a week or two later and bought myself a Specialized racing bike for £400. And that was that ...

My love of cycling has been tested by drug taking in the pro cycling ranks, my constant weight fluctuations, sunburn, chav attacks, dog attacks, minor crashes, minor injuries, major bonking, and wildly over-optimistic estimates of my fitness leading to long, painful rides home alone. Despite that, it's 22 years later and I'm still riding. I'm just so grateful that I happened to turn the TV on that July evening in 1989. Thanks Greg, and R.I.P. Laurent!

 

[HLaB]

I had cycled on and off as a kid on various bikes (probably more offs well I did go flying over the handle bars often!). A hand me down chopper & road bike. I then suffered from the BMX and mtb fashions . When I got a driving licence though the last of these (the mtb) was relegated to the shed and rarely used. In the course of things I moved to Dublin and nearly everybody in the office cycled and I got back into it. I ended up buying a cheap (near BSO) steel hybrid. It was mainly for transport at first but I soon found I was really enjoying it and often went on longer trips. When I moved back to Scotland the urge for n+1 soon developed and I haven't looked back since.

 

[mcshroom]

My first memory of riding a bike was my Dad sending me down the drive at our house without stabilisers on something like a 12" bike and falling off (The drive is about 1:4!! - he reconed it would mean I didn't need to worry about pedalling

)

Then I rode a BMX (before they were cool) and eventually an 'Apollo Chaos' 10sp pile of crap mtbso for a while as a teenager until I killed it crashing the bike into a concrete wall on a small singletrack at home (I had bailed out before impact)

After that I was off a bike for 12 years, after discovering first bus travelcards and then a car and ballooned to 21st

.

I bought a mtb (Decathlon Rockrider 5.1) which at £129 was to me quite an expensive bike, with the aim of cycling around a bit, but very soon after my car broke, so I tried commuting to work for a day or two until it was fixed. It eventually took nearly three weeks to get the car back on the road, and by that point I had decided that commuting by bike was possible (even though i walked up two hills each time).

I did ride in a few times over the next couple months, then made a New Year's resolution to cycle to work every day. That was 16 months ago! I've since tried touring and ridden a century, and in the process bought 2 more bikes, each time twice the price of the last one, and got a bit addicted to riding

.

Weight wise I'm about 3.5st less than my heaviest, but I could do a lot better if I didn't eat like a

 

[XmisterIS]

Ironically, and although I now use the bike for cardio fitness, petrol-saving and fun, I got into cycling as a young teenager when my mates and I twigged that we could use bikes to get far enough away from adults to be able to drink and smoke with a greatly reduced risk of getting caught!